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Indian Express
5 days ago
- Indian Express
AI-based identification, simpler registration: ETS to introduce changes in TOEFL, GRE
From next year, the English language test TOEFL will be offered as a personalised test which will adjust in real time based on how a student performs and will feature AI-assisted identity verification, according to the Educational Testing Service (ETS). While some of the changes in exams like TOEFL and GRE have been implemented from May 30 onwards, and the remaining will be introduced from 2026. According to officials, ETS will implement a multi-stage adaptive design for the reading and listening sections of the TOEFL iBT starting in 2026.'The test will use content that is relevant, accessible and carefully reviewed to reduce cultural bias,' said Rohit Sharma, Senior Vice President of Global Mobility Solutions at ETS. In addition to the traditional scoring system, TOEFL will introduce an intuitive score scale of 1 to 6. Score reports will display both the new 1 to 6 banded scale and the traditional 0 to 120 scale. Institutions will receive training and resources to facilitate a smooth transition to the new scoring system, as mentioned in the press release. Starting from May 2025, the home edition of the test will be redesigned to provide a more seamless and supportive experience. New features will include ETS-trained in-house proctors for consistent support throughout the testing session, AI-assisted identity verification (ENTRUST) to confirm test takers' identities while reducing check-in issues, and a simplified registration and test-day workflow to lower stress and administrative challenges. 'This additional score will directly align with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) – the world's most widely recognised English proficiency framework, making score interpretation simpler and more consistent,' Sharma said. In 2023, the ETS had executed a series of changes in the 60-year-old test to create an optimal experience for those taking it. Reducing the duration to less than two hours instead of three and allowing candidates to be able to see their official score release date upon completion of the test were among them. The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is a standardised test that measures the English language abilities of non-native speakers who wish to enrol in English-speaking universities. The test is recognised by over 12,000 institutions in more than 160 countries and is universally accepted in popular destinations such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Additionally, over 98 per cent of universities in the UK accept it, as per a statement by the ETS.
Time of India
5 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Toefl iBT overhauled: ETS brings AI, adaptive testing, CEFR scores, and relevant content for today's learners
ETS transforms TOEFL iBT with AI, adaptive testing, and faster scoring. (AI Image) TOEFL iBT updated: In a landmark move aimed at transforming the English-language testing experience, Educational Testing Service (ETS) has announced a sweeping overhaul of the TOEFL iBT test. The upgrades, designed to better align with modern learning environments, integrate AI-powered features, adaptive testing, and globally relevant academic content. These changes are part of ETS's broader mission to deliver a more equitable and student-centered assessment platform. The announcement, made on May 29, 2025, introduces a series of phased enhancements beginning May 30, 2025, with further major changes rolling out in January 2026. ETS confirmed that the updates are focused on fairness, faster results, improved accessibility, and a more intuitive scoring system—all without compromising the academic rigor and reliability that institutions across the world have trusted for over six decades. A more supportive at-home testing experience Starting May 30, 2025, test takers using the TOEFL iBT Home Edition will benefit from a redesigned experience. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Memperdagangkan CFD Emas dengan salah satu spread terendah? IC Markets Mendaftar Undo ETS will deploy its own trained in-house proctors and use AI-assisted identity verification technology, known as ENTRUST, to ensure smooth and secure test sessions. These updates also include simplified registration and streamlined test-day procedures to minimize stress and reduce cancellations. 'We're transforming TOEFL to be more fair, flexible, and relevant,' said Omar Chihane, global general manager of TOEFL at ETS. 'Whether testing at a center in India or from home in Denmark, every student deserves a fair shot to demonstrate their English proficiency.' Adaptive testing for real-world performance Beginning in January 2026, ETS will implement a multistage adaptive testing model for the Reading and Listening sections. This adaptive design will personalize the test in real time, adjusting the difficulty of questions based on a student's performance. According to ETS, this approach offers a more accurate measure of real academic English skills, such as understanding group discussions and engaging in project work. The updated content will move away from outdated topics and focus on equitable, relevant materials that resonate with today's global learners. ETS emphasizes that all content is carefully reviewed to reduce cultural bias and better reflect diverse academic scenarios. Faster scores and easier interpretation TOEFL test takers will now receive scores within 72 hours or less, a critical improvement for students facing tight university application deadlines, particularly in countries like India. Starting in January 2026, ETS will also introduce dual score reporting: the traditional 0–120 scale will be supplemented by a new, easy-to-understand 1–6 banded scale aligned with the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). Upgraded equipment and expanded prep support ETS is also enhancing the in-person testing experience by outfitting all global test centers with new state-of-the-art custom 'stereophones' developed in collaboration with Koss, a leading audio brand. To support preparation, ETS will launch new free and paid prep resources in July 2025. Rohit Sharma, senior vice president of Global Mobility Solutions at ETS, noted, 'We're preserving our high bar for quality while evolving the experience—removing friction, improving fairness, and making the process more inclusive.' With acceptance from 100% of universities in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia—and over 13,000 institutions globally—TOEFL iBT remains the gold standard in high-stakes English proficiency testing. Ready to empower your child for the AI era? Join our program now! Hurry, only a few seats left.
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Opinion: Cracking the Code Behind the Nation's Dismal 8th Grade Reading Scores
A version of this essay originally appeared on Robert Pondiscio's Substack. The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results delivered a familiar gut punch: Just 30% of eighth graders read at or above the proficient level, a number that's barely budged in decades. Even in states like Mississippi and Louisiana, which have earned national attention thanks to literacy reforms that have smartly lifted fourth-grade scores in recent NAEP cycles, early gains tend to plateau or evaporate by eighth grade. A substantial number of U.S. students simply seem to run out of gas as readers as they move from upper elementary to middle school and beyond. A compelling explanation may lie in something called the decoding threshold. Teachers often assume that once students master decoding in early elementary school, they're set to shift from learning to read to reading to learn. However, in 2019, researchers at the Educational Testing Service published a noteworthy study that measured foundational literacy skills — like decoding — in students from upper elementary through high school. Most reading tests in the older grades focus solely on comprehension; they don't offer much insight into whether students have mastered the basic skills necessary to read fluently. The findings showed evidence of a troubling phenomenon: Students with weak decoding skills consistently performed poorly on comprehension tasks, while those who surpassed a certain level of decoding ability tended to understand texts much more effectively. In other words, although decoding isn't the only skill older students need to succeed in reading, those who haven't yet mastered it are likely to struggle with understanding complex material. A follow-up study three years later confirmed it: Those below the decoding threshold stagnated, while those above the line advanced — offering tantalizing evidence to explain why eighth-grade NAEP scores plateau even as fourth-grade numbers rise. A recent research brief put the matter succinctly and starkly: 'If children do not have adequate word-recognition skills, their reading comprehension often won't get better no matter how much direct support for comprehension they receive.' Related The tripwire that appears to be holding kids back is multisyllabic decoding. Students who can decode simple words like 'cat' and 'bed' with relative ease may still struggle to break down longer, more complex words into smaller, manageable parts to read them correctly. Imagine two eighth graders reading a science passage that includes the word 'photosynthesis.' The student above the decoding threshold effortlessly breaks it into 'photo' and 'synthesis,' adjusts the sounds in her head — like 'syn' to 'sin' — and reads it smoothly, quickly grasping it as a plant process she's studying. Meanwhile, the student below the threshold freezes at the unfamiliar term and mangles it as 'photo-sith-esis' or 'photo-sy-thee-sis.' Struggling to decode the big word, he loses the thread of the sentence, missing the whole idea of plants making energy. It's another manifestation of cognitive load theory: Brainpower spent decoding multisyllabic words is not available to attend to the meaning of the text. Worse, the decoding threshold fuels a rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer phenomenon often referred to as the Matthew Effect: Students who are below the decoding threshold stop growing in vocabulary, reading comprehension and knowledge acquisition, while those who are above have what it takes to keep learning and growing, leaving the struggling readers in their wake. Worse still, evidence of the decoding threshold reveals a blind spot in common approaches to teaching reading. 'We basically don't teach [multisyllabic decoding] anywhere in the system because it's too advanced for second graders. And after second grade, we stop decoding instruction and flip into comprehension and fluency,' observes Rebecca Kockler, a former Louisiana state education leader who now heads Reading Reimagined, a $40 million initiative of the Advanced Education Research and Development Fund. 'If I had a magic wand, I would pull decoding fluency work up almost into seventh or eighth grade,' she says, while pushing down to early elementary grades the building blocks of multisyllabic decoding, such as morphology and etymology. If you teach kids to break words into their smallest meaningful pieces, like 'un-' for 'not' or '-ness' for a state of being, they're more likely to be able to handle 'unhappiness' by spotting its parts, for example. And by showing them where words come from — like how 'photo' in 'photosynthesis' means 'light' from Greek — they will be better able to infer what words mean. Related As persuasive as the decoding threshold thesis might be, the wish for a magic wand to wave at curriculum and standards hints at a serious problem: There is no immediate or obvious solution at hand to address the issue. Nor is there simply a lack of appropriate curriculum or materials. A recent RAND survey of teachers in grades 3 to 8 found that 44% of their students 'always or nearly always experience difficulty' reading the content of their instructional materials. The report also found many of those same teachers hold misconceptions about how students develop word recognition skills. A new nonprofit venture called Magpie Literacy, a collaborative effort with the fund led by Kockler, has been piloting a set of tech-enabled instructional tools aimed at addressing these issues directly. In a 12-week pilot in grades K-2 across 11 schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, early results were promising, with evidence of impact in only 8 to 12 weeks of use. Student growth was most pronounced, according to Kockler's colleagues, among students starting at the lowest levels of proficiency. K-2 may sound early to address a problem that shows up starkly in eighth grade, but it reflects a growing conviction: unless students start building sophisticated decoding skills young, and those skills are reinforced often, too many will continue to hit the wall in middle school and never get back up to speed. 'We've had this belief that we teach kids to read and then they read to learn,' Kockler explains, 'and we just fundamentally do not believe that's true anymore.' Related If you had asked her years ago, when she was assistant superintendent of academics with the Louisiana Department of Education, to estimate the percentage of middle schoolers who struggled with decoding to the point that it interfered with their reading comprehension, Kockler would have guessed 7% to 10%. 'We think that number is more like 30% to 40%,' she now says, 'which really mirrors this group of middle schoolers who never ever show growth on state tests or NAEP.'
